Strauss's Arabella
Tobias Kratzer (stage director), Sir Donald Runnicles (conductor) — With Sara Jakubiak (Arabella), Albert Pesendorfer (Count Waldner), Elena Tsallagova (Zdenka)...
Cast
Tobias Kratzer — Stage director
Rainer Sellmaier — Set designer, costume designer
Clara Hertel — Costumes designer
Manuel Braun — Video designer
Jonas Dahl — Video designer
Stefan Woinke — Lighting designer
Jeroen Verbruggen — Choreographer
Albert Pesendorfer — Count Waldner
Program notes
In late-19th-century Vienna, Arabella, a young woman from a ruined aristocratic family, is pressured into an advantageous marriage, while her sister Zdenka — forced to live disguised as a boy for financial reasons — questions the conventions that govern their destinies. When the wealthy landowner Mandryka enters Arabella’s life, a subtle interplay of desires, misunderstandings, and social expectations unfolds, revealing the fragility of imposed roles and the contradictions between individual aspirations and collective norms.
In Richard Strauss’s opera, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the rich orchestration and Viennese setting mask a deeper reflection on identity and relationships. This production by Tobias Kratzer highlights the clash between traditional views and modern sensibilities, making Arabella not merely a comedy of manners, but an exploration of the search for love and freedom in the face of stultifying social conventions, from the Vienna of yesteryear to our own time.
